Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Quantity
Of The Gastric Juice Diminishes With The Duration Of Abstinence.
It is
probable that this juice, far from accumulating, is digested as an
alimentary substance.
If a cat or dog be made to swallow a substance
which is not susceptible of being digested, a pebble for instance, a
mucous and acid liquid is formed abundantly in the cavity of the
stomach, somewhat resembling in its composition the gastric juice of
the human body. It appears to me very probable, that when the want of
aliments compels the Ottomacs and the inhabitants of New Caledonia to
swallow clay and steatite during a part of the year, these earths
occasion a powerful secretion of the gastric and pancreatic juices in
the digestive apparatus of these people. The observations which I made
on the banks of the Orinoco, have been recently confirmed by the
direct experiments of two distinguished young physiologists, MM.
Cloquet and Breschet. After long fasting they ate as much as five
ounces of a silvery green and very flexible laminar talc. Their hunger
was completely satisfied, and they felt no inconvenience from a kind
of food to which their organs were unaccustomed. It is known that
great use is still made in the East of the bolar and sigillated earths
of Lemnos, which are clay mingled with oxide of iron. In Germany the
workmen employed in the quarries of sandstone worked at the mountain
of Kiffhauser spread a very fine clay upon their bread, instead of
butter, which they call steinbutter* (stone-butter). (* This
steinbutter must not be confounded with the mountain butter
(bergbutter) which is a saline substance, produced by a decomposition
of aluminous schists.)
The state of perfect health enjoyed by the Ottomacs during the time
when they use little muscular exercise, and are subjected to so
extraordinary a regimen, is a phenomenon difficult to be explained.
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